Vigil Read Online Free PDF

hint of a train track, off in the distance. Scrub grass grew in patches. Scraggly trees tried to reach the sky through the scorched buildings.
    Once, the whole city had been burned black and coated with ash. Then the rains had come, radiation burning what the fires had not.
    Life was returning, at last. It was slow. Another ten, twenty, thirty years? Maybe the planet would purge itself of the poisons of man.
    Not in Tom’s lifetime. The vegetation was still stunted. Yellow. Trees looked like smoker’s fingers. The weeds, the grass, the wild flowers…everything had that sickly yellow hue.
    Beautiful.
    Tom smiled and stuck the memory away.
    Death might be a release from pain. He hated this existence. And yet, there was still beauty in the world.
    But hope?
    No. No hope. Not for mankind. But hope for the world.
    The car swerved and bumped. Tom’s head cracked against the window and he slid back to the floor.
    Before he fell, he saw three vampires standing in the shadows. He felt a shiver travel down his spine.
    He’d told them all, but they hadn’t listened.
    His theories were so often ignored. He was the crackpot old man. Marie cared for him, he knew, but no one else.
    Besides, what would the people think if Tom told them that there was a group of vampires watching their retreat?
    It didn’t matter a damn what Tom knew. He had no chance of making them listen now he might be infected. From the moment the vampire’s blood had touched him he had become a non-person. He would hold his tongue.
    If he lived, there would always be tomorrow.
    ‘We’re here,’ said Marie, more for something to say than any real desire to inform them. She was looking over her shoulder at Tom. She nodded once. He nodded back to her, as best he could.
    She would be cold from now on. He wouldn’t hold it against her, should he live. It was necessary.
    That nod told him all he needed to know. If she had to, she would not hesitate to end his life.
    A gate clanged shut. 
    Tom didn’t feel any different, but some of the blood might have got into his eyes or his mouth. The infection was virulent and the transmission rate for those coming into contact with the cured unbelievably high.
    Marie and Samson dragged him out of the van. He thumped against the cold concrete.
    ‘Careful. He’s probably infected,’ Samson told the two men who were waiting, net guns at the read. Four more men waited behind them, slightly off to one side, armed with rifles. The tips of the bullets would have been dipped in silver. They were waiting for the vampire.
    ‘Fuck. Tom?’ said a man with a fat cigar in his mouth. He wore a badge on his shoulder. It was the badge of an officer.
    ‘Don’t talk to him!’ Samson told him.
    ‘Yeah, OK. But, seriously…fuck.’
    ‘Did you get one?’ asked another man.
    ‘It’s in the van.’
    Tom watched their smiles grow. Idiots. Who would be happy to have one of the cured in their home? The last time had nearly spelled the end for their little enclave.
    But it was what the council had decreed, and Tom was just a scientist.
    He shut his eyes and let the two security guards carry him away to isolation. There was no point in arguing or complaining. To the people who lived here he was effectively dead. He didn’t make it any harder on them by talking to them. He might have known them for more than twenty years, but they would tear him apart in a heartbeat if he changed.
    They would call it an experiment.
    But Marie wouldn’t let it come to that.
     
    *

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Eight
     
    Fallon Corp.
    Level 1
     
    The enclave was underground. Once, it had been the Fallon Corporation’s research complex.
    The majority of the survivor’s time was spent trying to understand the work that Fallon Corp. had been engaged in. It was an impossible task. Computer data had been purposely corrupted before the end. Many of the weapons within a deeper level of the complex were useable, but the technology for making further